Where can older adults, retirees in Indiana get tax-filing assistance?

How can older adults and retirees efficiently and effectively file taxes in Indiana? Several audience members inspired this question.

Stacy Engle is a spokesperson for the Internal Revenue Service. She said in-person assistance includes volunteer income tax assistance, or VITA, clinics and tax counseling for elderly, or TCE, sites.

“The tax counseling for the elderly is focused on retirement or Social Security recipients – people that are older than 60,” Engle said. “They help not only file their tax returns, but they can help guide them to understand the taxability of their Social Security income.”

She said this tax counseling can also help seniors who have minimum distribution for retirement or individual retirement accounts based on their age.

“If [older adults] don't withdraw enough from their IRA or retirement accounts at age 73, they can be subject to penalties, which are what we call the required minimum distributions,” Engle said. “So they would have to take a monthly pension from that. Those can create penalty situations. So tax professionals at the volunteer sites can help guide taxpayers.”

She said there are also worksheets available to determine these potential tax liabilities.
 

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Engle said the IRS website contains free filing resources for seniors. She said the website also includes information to help taxpayers filing on their own.

“The IRS.gov webpage has a lot of really good information to help guide taxpayers and seniors – what their requirements are when it comes to making their distributions or withdrawing from their for 401(k)s or IRAs based on their age,” she said.

Engle encouraged older adults trying to find tax clinics or more information to visit the website – Hoosiers can set up an appointment with these clinics online or over the phone.

Violet is our daily news reporter. Contact her at vcomberwilen@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @ComberWilen.